Devices for the reproduction of music and other sounds, either broadcast or reproduced from magnetic tape or disc, are increasingly popular forms of recreation and cultural development. High fidelity stereophonic systems, in particular, have grown into a form of mass leisure and become the basis of a strongly growing audio industry.
The present invention relates generally to audio reproduction systems, and particularly to systems of the high fidelity type, which are essentially concerned with the faith-full re-creation of sound events or, more exactly, with a re-creation of sound sensations that is as close as possible to the sound sensations that a listener would have received at the place and time of the original events, with regard to frequency range, dynamics, impulse behavior, noise, distortion (or shortly, sound quality) and, most of all, in the case of stereophonic systems, with the local (space) and temporal (phase, delay) determinants of the sound sensations. Totally, high fidelity stereophonic systems should be able to provide the whole depth and detail that the human ear can detect in the presence of original sound events. Such a task, obviously, can only be achieved through the use of particular and partly complex high fidelity technologies.
The invention relates further to battery-operated radio-cassette devices of stereophonic though not high fidelity type and to automobile stereo sound systems, both of which are presently showing a strong growth in quantity as well as quality.
The invention relates finally to high fidelity headphone applications and to the art of binaural stereophonic reproduction in general.